What would be the symptoms of a dodgy filter?

aliasojo

Yesterday and today my bb connection has been going down for a few minutes at a time and at one point I had no dial tone in my line at all. My phones showed 'check phone line'. There seems to be a lot of crackling during a phone conversation but my router shows the noise margin as being 2.6 downstream and 18 upstream so that's low. Is it?

Both the phone and the bb is erratic. Nothing has changed in the set up so I either have a fault on my line or I need to buy new ADSL filters. How would I tell which it might be?

I'm loathe to call BT at the moment at I have an 'interesting' master socket which I think they would not be impressed with and would bill me big time to replace it. (Nothing dodgy, just extension wires hard wired into the main socket and I believe this isn't allowed.) It's been this way for 20 years and there's never been a problem up till now.)


Edit: The phone has rung twice since writing the above and each time the line has been crackly and the bb has gone down. Does that indicate filter probs?

Halloway

Sounds like a line fault but you won't find out unless you phone them. If everything has been working up to now it is unlikely that something has failed on your side of the master socket - there isn't that much to go wrong unless someone has been pulling wires.

Perhaps someone with more knowledge of these things can comment on the extensions being wired into the master socket. There certainly used to be restrictions but then how else would you wire in an extension if not to the master socket?

DatabaseError

aliasojo wrote: »

...one point I had no dial tone in my line at all. My phones showed 'check phone line'. There seems to be a lot of crackling during a phone conversation

phone bt, report a voice fault

aliasojo

Halloway wrote: »

Perhaps someone with more knowledge of these things can comment on the extensions being wired into the master socket. There certainly used to be restrictions but then how else would you wire in an extension if not to the master socket?

As far as I know, the issue was that it was only the BT engineer who was allowed to access the master socket. Obviously this caused problems for many DIYers who wanted to run their own extensions, which is why they changed the Master socket to the type which had 2 sections. The top area is still BT only and the bottom area could be used by anyone to wire in extensions. I have the old 'do not touch' type, lol.

I suppose I'll need to bite the bullet and phone them. Wish me luck, I really don't need a big bill right now. :rolleyes:

espresso

aliasojo wrote: »

As far as I know, the issue was that it was only the BT engineer who was allowed to access the master socket. Obviously this caused problems for many DIYers who wanted to run their own extensions, which is why they changed the Master socket to the type which had 2 sections. The top area is still BT only and the bottom area could be used by anyone to wire in extensions. I have the old 'do not touch' type, lol.

I suppose I'll need to bite the bullet and phone them. Wish me luck, I really don't need a big bill right now. :rolleyes:

But you haven't touched it have you. BT don't keep photographic evidence of every installation and they can test you line from the exchange to your master socket without even needing to enter your property.

timbim_2

To hijack this thread hugely, is it OK to play with the two part socket if the wires from the street don't terminate at that socket, but a grey box in the garage? We had the system installed by a non-BT engineer?

Conor_3

To the OP, when my filter packed up, it did exactly the same. I had a spare filter so it was easy to swap out.

aliasojo

espresso wrote: »

But you haven't touched it have you. BT don't keep photographic evidence of every installation and they can test you line from the exchange to your master socket without even needing to enter your property.

Me? Nooooo.:A


(At least not for a while, anyway )

There's a facility on the BT website to do a line check and it came back as ok.

I then went out and bought a new filter which was a cheapo looking thing as that was all the shop beside me had. It hasn't made a great deal of difference to the bb going down but the crackling has stopped. I then tried a different router but I still lost connection.

Since the new filter has made a difference to the crackling....I'm now wondering if there are quality issues and if I bought a better quality brand name filter, would it help? Is a filter a filter or are some better than others?

Also, I only tried replacing the one where the router was plugged into, should I have tried replacing the others too? Could a problem on a filter in another room still cause an issue with the bb?

I get the feeling my bb is generally slower now too, it's hard to know whether this is linked or co-incidental.

espresso

aliasojo wrote: »

Also, I only tried replacing the one where the router was plugged into, should I have tried replacing the others too? Could a problem on a filter in another room still cause an issue with the bb?

The only way to check is to unplug all other devices from the line and just connect your modem/router. Then connect a phone and progressively add more filters one by one.

I get the feeling my bb is generally slower now too, it's hard to know whether this is linked or co-incidental.

If it is noticeably slower you probably have a line fault between your property and the exchange. Check you stats and post your figures see here.

..............

aliasojo

DownStream Connection Speed 3936 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 448 kbps


I have an 8mb connection. :rolleyes:

I usually average around 6.5mb/7mb for download speed roughly but it has exceeded 8mb very often too.

There's something wrong going by the above figures.

aliasojo

Ok, getting nowhere fast. Everything unplugged except for new filter/router/newish phone. Prob still there.

Phoned Pipex and got foreign person who repeated and thanked me profusely for every single piece of information I gave them which made the call very lengthy (@ 10p per minute) and at the end of it told me I had to phone BT as they provided my landline!!! :mad: Could they not have said that at the start?

Phoned BT who insist there is no problem on my line and told me to phone my bb supplier. When I told him my bb supplier insist it's at the BT end, he told me to unplug my extension leads (which in reality are hard wired :rolleyes: ) as it might be them, and he wants me to plug the router and phone into the master socket. It's not even in the same room. So I either need to disconnect the pc and haul everything through...or just move the router and buy a long ethernet cable to reach the pc....or buy a long phone extension lead.

I really would like to go back to pre-technology days, I'm sure living then was much less stressful.